What I liked
Everything!!!
“Hair keeps growing after you die”, nearly killed me.
What I didn't like
I look forward to more!
My overall impression
It’s timely that Seamus Mulcahy’s hilarious Hollywood Fringe show, A HISTORICAL GAY COMEDY STARRING NANCY REAGAN, previewed just one day before Cole Escola won the Tony Award, also for playing the wife of a US President. This show feels like, as Nancy might sing,”the start of something big”. Seamus Mulcahy’s masterful acting/clown skills imbue Nancy Reagan, speaking from the grave, with outrageous drag and subtle nuance – in a flaming red dress, heels and pearls, with no more than a head tilt, an upward glance, a sigh, a shift from one hip to the other – we fall at the feet of this repressed, bazaar, robotically-conservative, controlling, dead woman. Laughter roared as Mulcahy’s Nancy recounts her past in all it’s unhinged ridiculous mystery. At one point in each performance, Nancy, opens her biography and reads from a random page. It’s a small illustration of numerous moments throughout the show where Mulcahy trusts, with wild abandon, his artistic courage.
This hysterical show speaks to the Nancy Reagan in all of us. The primal fear. Who are we really? A false self? What is performance? There is a surprising ease with which we can fool others. And, it’s a terrifying, ironic, yet obvious realization that conservatism is so Drag!
I hope this show eventually goes longer and harder. The potential is there. God knows what Nancy is capable of! She might finally make it to Broadway!
